Here was a piece of river which was all down in my book,but I could make neither head nor tail of it: you understand,it was turned around. I had seen it when coming up-stream, but Ihad never faced about to see how it looked when it was behind me.
My heart broke again, for it was plain that I had got to learn thistroublesome river BOTH WAYS.
The pilot-house was full of pilots, going down to 'look at the river.'
What is called the 'upper river' (the two hundred miles between St. Louisand Cairo, where the Ohio comes in) was low; and the Mississippi changesits channel so constantly that the pilots used to always find itnecessary to run down to Cairo to take a fresh look, when their boatswere to lie in port a week; that is, when the water was at a low stage.
A deal of this 'looking at the river' was done by poor fellows who seldomhad a berth, and whose only hope of getting one lay in their beingalways freshly posted and therefore ready to drop into the shoesof some reputable pilot, for a single trip, on account of such pilot'ssudden illness, or some other necessity. And a good many of themconstantly ran up and down inspecting the river, not because they everreally hoped to get a berth, but because (they being guests of the boat)it was cheaper to 'look at the river' than stay ashore and pay board.
In time these fellows grew dainty in their tastes, and only infestedboats that had an established reputation for setting good tables.
All visiting pilots were useful, for they were always ready and willing,winter or summer, night or day, to go out in the yawl and help buoythe channel or assist the boat's pilots in any way they could.
They were likewise welcome because all pilots are tireless talkers,when gathered together, and as they talk only about the river theyare always understood and are always interesting. Your true pilotcares nothing about anything on earth but the river, and his pridein his occupation surpasses the pride of kings.
We had a fine company of these river-inspectors along, this trip.
There were eight or ten; and there was abundance of room for them in ourgreat pilot-house. Two or three of them wore polished silk hats, elaborateshirt-fronts, diamond breast-pins, kid gloves, and patent-leather boots.
They were choice in their English, and bore themselves with a dignityproper to men of solid means and prodigious reputation as pilots.
The others were more or less loosely clad, and wore upon their heads tallfelt cones that were suggestive of the days of the Commonwealth.
I was a cipher in this august company, and felt subdued, not to say torpid.
I was not even of sufficient consequence to assist at the wheel when itwas necessary to put the tiller hard down in a hurry; the guest that stoodnearest did that when occasion required--and this was pretty much allthe time, because of the crookedness of the channel and the scant water.
I stood in a corner; and the talk I listened to took the hope all out of me.
One visitor said to another--'Jim, how did you run Plum Point, coming up?'
'It was in the night, there, and I ran it the way one of the boyson the "Diana" told me; started out about fifty yards abovethe wood pile on the false point, and held on the cabinunder Plum Point till I raised the reef--quarter less twain--then straightened up for the middle bar till I got well abreastthe old one-limbed cotton-wood in the bend, then got my sternon the cotton-wood and head on the low place above the point,and came through a-booming--nine and a half.'
'Pretty square crossing, an't it.?'
'Yes, but the upper bar 's working down fast.'
Another pilot spoke up and said--'I had better water than that, and ran it lower down;started out from the false point--mark twain--raised the secondreef abreast the big snag in the bend, and had quarter less twain.'
One of the gorgeous ones remarked--'I don't want to find fault with your leadsmen, but that's a good dealof water for Plum Point, it seems to me.'
There was an approving nod all around as this quiet snub dropped onthe boaster and 'settled' him. And so they went on talk-talk talking.
Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my earshear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and islandsand bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm personalacquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood and obscurewood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles;and more than that, I must actually know where these things are in the dark,unless these guests are gifted with eyes that can pierce through two milesof solid blackness; I wish the piloting business was in Jericho and I hadnever thought of it.'
At dusk Mr. Bixby tapped the big bell three times (the signalto land), and the captain emerged from his drawing-roomin the forward end of the texas, and looked up inquiringly.
Mr. Bixby said--'We will lay up here all night, captain.'
'Very well, sir.'
That was all. The boat came to shore and was tied up for the night.
It seemed to me a fine thing that the pilot could do as he pleased,without asking so grand a captain's permission. I took my supper and wentimmediately to bed, discouraged by my day's observations and experiences.
My late voyage's note-booking was but a confusion of meaningless names.
It had tangled me all up in a knot every time I had looked at it inthe daytime. I now hoped for respite in sleep; but no, it reveled allthrough my head till sunrise again, a frantic and tireless nightmare.
Next morning I felt pretty rusty and low-spirited. We went booming along,taking a good many chances, for we were anxious to 'get out of the river'
(as getting out to Cairo was called) before night should overtake us.
But Mr. Bixby's partner, the other pilot, presently grounded the boat,and we lost so much time in getting her off that it was plain thatdarkness would overtake us a good long way above the mouth. This was agreat misfortune, especially to certain of our visiting pilots, whose boatswould have to wait for their return, no matter how long that might be.
It sobered the pilot-house talk a good deal. Coming up-stream, pilots didnot mind low water or any kind of darkness; nothing stopped them but fog.
But down-stream work was different; a boat was too nearly helpless,with a stiff current pushing behind her; so it was not customary to rundown-stream at night in low water.
There seemed to be one small hope, however: if we could get throughthe intricate and dangerous Hat Island crossing before night, we couldventure the rest, for we would have plainer sailing and better water.
But it would be insanity to attempt Hat Island at night.
So there was a deal of looking at watches all the rest of the day,and a constant ciphering upon the speed we were making; Hat Islandwas the eternal subject; sometimes hope was high and sometimeswe were delayed in a bad crossing, and down it went again.
For hours all hands lay under the burden of this suppressed excitement;it was even communicated to me, and I got to feeling sosolicitous about Hat Island, and under such an awful pressureof responsibility, that I wished I might have five minutes on shoreto draw a good, full, relieving breath, and start over again.
We were standing no regular watches. Each of our pilots ransuch portions of the river as he had run when coming up-stream,because of his greater familiarity with it; but both remained inthe pilot house constantly.
An hour before sunset, Mr. Bixby took the wheel and Mr. W----stepped aside. For the next thirty minutes every man heldhis watch in his hand and was restless, silent, and uneasy.
At last somebody said, with a doomful sigh--'Well, yonder's Hat Island--and we can't make it.'
All the watches closed with a snap, everybody sighedand muttered something about its being 'too bad, too bad--ah, if we could only have got here half an hour sooner!'
and the place was thick with the atmosphere of disappointment.
Some started to go out, but loitered, hearing no bell-tap to land.
The sun dipped behind the horizon, the boat went on.
Inquiring looks passed from one guest to another;and one who had his hand on the door-knob and hadturned it, waited, then presently took away his hand and letthe knob turn back again. We bore steadily down the bend.
More looks were exchanged, and nods of surprised admiration--but no words. Insensibly the men drew together behind Mr. Bixby,as the sky darkened and one or two dim stars came out.
The dead silence and sense of waiting became oppressive.
Mr. Bixby pulled the cord, and two deep, mellow notesfrom the big bell floated off on the night. Then a pause,and one more note was struck. The watchman's voice followed,from the hurricane deck--'Labboard lead, there! Stabboard lead!'
The cries of the leadsmen began to rise out of the distance,and were gruffly repeated by the word-passers on the hurricane deck.
'M-a-r-k three!.... M-a-r-k three!.... Quarter-less three! .... Halftwain! .... Quarter twain! .... M-a-r-k twain! .... Quarter-less--'
Mr. Bixby pulled two bell-ropes, and was answered by faintjinglings far below in the engine room, and our speed slackened.
The steam began to whistle through the gauge-cocks. The cries ofthe leadsmen went on--and it is a weird sound, always, in the night.
Every pilot in the lot was watching now, with fixed eyes, and talkingunder his breath. Nobody was calm and easy but Mr. Bixby.
He would put his wheel down and stand on a spoke, and as the steamerswung into her (to me) utterly invisible marks--for we seemed to be inthe midst of a wide and gloomy sea--he would meet and fasten her there.
Out of the murmur of half-audible talk, one caught a coherent sentencenow and then--such as--'There; she's over the first reef all right!'
After a pause, another subdued voice--'Her stern's coming down just exactly right, by George!'
'Now she's in the marks; over she goes!'
Somebody else muttered--'Oh, it was done beautiful--BEAUTIFUL!'
Now the engines were stopped altogether, and we driftedwith the current. Not that I could see the boat drift,for I could not, the stars being all gone by this time.
This drifting was the dismalest work; it held one's heart still.
Presently I discovered a blacker gloom than that which surrounded us.
It was the head of the island. We were closing right down upon it.
We entered its deeper shadow, and so imminent seemed the perilthat I was likely to suffocate; and I had the strongestimpulse to do SOMETHING, anything, to save the vessel.
But still Mr. Bixby stood by his wheel, silent, intent as a cat,and all the pilots stood shoulder to shoulder at his back.
'She'll not make it!' somebody whispered.
The water grew shoaler and shoaler, by the leadsman's cries,till it was down to--'Eight-and-a-half!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... E-i-g-h-t feet!.... Seven-and--'
Mr. Bixby said warningly through his speaking tube to the engineer--'Stand by, now!'
'Aye-aye, sir!'
'Seven-and-a-half! Seven feet! Six-and--'
We touched bottom! Instantly Mr. Bixby set a lot of bells ringing,shouted through the tube, 'NOW, let her have it--every ounce you've got!'
then to his partner, 'Put her hard down! snatch her! snatch her!'
The boat rasped and ground her way through the sand, hung upon the apexof disaster a single tremendous instant, and then over she went!
And such a shout as went up at Mr. Bixby's back never loosened the roof ofa pilot-house before!
There was no more trouble after that. Mr. Bixby was a hero that night;and it was some little time, too, before his exploit ceased to be talkedabout by river men.
Fully to realize the marvelous precision required in layingthe great steamer in her marks in that murky waste of water,one should know that not only must she pick her intricateway through snags and blind reefs, and then shave the headof the island so closely as to brush the overhanging foliagewith her stern, but at one place she must pass almost withinarm's reach of a sunken and invisible wreck that would snatchthe hull timbers from under her if she should strike it,and destroy a quarter of a million dollars' worth of steam-boatand cargo in five minutes, and maybe a hundred and fifty humanlives into the bargain.
The last remark I heard that night was a compliment to Mr. Bixby,uttered in soliloquy and with unction by one of our guests. He said--'By the Shadow of Death, but he's a lightning pilot!'
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